Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[cupid_stunt]

Could I have a link for this please? Thanks. Using the link Roadkill posted a page back my area (Kirklees = Huddersfield & Dewsbury) has three times the cases of the adjacent area (Calderdale = Halifax) i.e. 95 v 31 I’d like to see this is colours.

Zoom in on this map - Official UK Coronavirus Dashboard

 

[Roadkill]

This is a serious question.

Has there ever been a worse PM? How did we end up here?

I can't think of one. There've been some forgettable and short-lived Prime Ministers (e.g. Douglas-Home, Canning), some incompetent ones (Goderich, perhaps Bute) and some scoundrels (Walpole, for a start), but I can't think of another one who's combined incompetence and dishonesty in the way Johnson does.

 

[maomao]

I can't think of one. There've been some forgettable and short-lived Prime Ministers (e.g. Douglas-Home, Canning), some incompetent ones (Goderich, perhaps Bute) and some scoundrels (Walpole, for a start), but I can't think of another one who's combined incompetence and dishonesty in the way Johnson does.

The nearest competition comes from the last two.

 

[AverageJoe]

Could I have a link for this please? Thanks. Using the link Roadkill posted a page back my area (Kirklees = Huddersfield & Dewsbury) has three times the cases of the adjacent area (Calderdale = Halifax) i.e. 95 v 31 I’d like to see this is colours.

Of course. Here you go

Official UK Coronavirus Dashboard

GOV.UK Coronavirus dashboard

coronavirus.data.gov.uk

 

[Artaxerxes]

This is a serious question.

Has there ever been a worse PM? How did we end up here?

Eden was stacked up on Meth and nearly caused the third world war but he'd probably have encouraged people to wash hands a bit better

 

[flypanam]

The nearest competition comes from the last two.

And Brown.

 

[Boudicca]

You reminded me to check ours. 455 today, fucking hell. I don’t have the headspace to try and work out if this is caused by a big lag or we’ve had some superspreader events. I think we were around 200 per day last week.

It's the bloody students - central Bournemouth, East Cliff and Winton.

(It probably isn't, I'm just being a grumpy old woman)

 

[Teaboy]

It's the bloody students - central Bournemouth, East Cliff and Winton.

(It probably isn't, I'm just being a grumpy old woman)

It very likely remains a big part of the problem. From speaking with a couple of students it does seem that there is some fairly large scale testing going on with that particularly group and we know the more you look the more you find.

 

[elbows]

Well the wider Bournemouth area (eg including Poole hospital) had a hospital outbreak problem a while back, and such things are both an indicator of wider community transmission and also something that can feed back into the community, causing a cycle of infections that very much includes vulnerable groups.

In terms of testing numbers, looking at Bournemouth local news has revealed a big change to national case reporting, probably to try to undo the distortions that were caused by students testing positive often being added to the local totals for their home address rather than their term-time address. So what I found applies to the whole of England, not just a local Bournemouth issue:

Why BCP's coronavirus figures were so high on November 16

PUBLIC Health England has updated the way it records the location of people tested for Covid-19.

www.bournemouthecho.co.uk

A statement on the government website said: “Cases are allocated to the person's area of residence. From 16 November 2020, PHE has updated the way it records the location of people who test positive or negative for COVID-19.

“It now prioritises addresses given at the point of testing over the details registered on a patient’s NHS Summary Care Record. This better reflects the distribution of cases and testing.

It continued: “However, it may give rise to differences in previously reported numbers of cases and rates in some areas. The change has been retrospectively applied to tests carried out from 1 September 2020, and data in the dashboard was updated to reflect this change on 16 November 2020.

“Due to reallocation of cases in this way, the number of cases reported by local authority may be artificially high or low on 16 November 2020.”

This has been a known issue for some time and the press could have turned it into another story of a pandemic data disaster if they had wanted to. But for whatever reason they didnt really run with the story in that direction, lets see if its noticed now that PHE have fixed the issue.

With or without that change, I do not recommend people build a sense of risk in their local area thats based only on positive test numbers. Its not a complete picture, access to testing varies by location, and certain groups are more likely to be tested than others.

 

[teuchter]

As you can see, there's three council areas in both East Sussex & West Sussex doing OKish, separated by B&H City, but also with problem areas surrounding us in all directions.

View attachment 239184

That's a bit of luck, that could easily run out, so solidarity with those areas, we are all in this together.

The Zoe map doesn't really agree with this - the coastal areas showing somewhat higher rates than the inland ones.

I think this gov.uk map is liable to be misleading, because it gives the appearance of accurate and specific data but as far as I can make out it's going to be heavily influenced by the level of testing in each place.

It doesn't even try to show the results as a rate per tests done, as far as I can understand.

 

[cupid_stunt]

The Zoe map doesn't really agree with this - the coastal areas showing somewhat higher rates than the inland ones.

I think this gov.uk map is liable to be misleading, because it gives the appearance of accurate and specific data but as far as I can make out it's going to be heavily influenced by the level of testing in each place.

It doesn't even try to show the results as a rate per tests done, as far as I can understand.

Well hospital admissions & deaths are a lot lower in the coastal area of West Sussex than the north of the county, so I'll take what Zoe reports with a pinch of salt.

 

[StoneRoad]

It's the bloody students - central Bournemouth, East Cliff and Winton.

(It probably isn't, I'm just being a grumpy old woman)

No, you're not.

I watched the absolute tsunami of cases on the banks of the Tyne & Wear around the start of term.
That was mostly caused by the case rate in the students, and very much mainly in Freshers.
As I suspected, it got off campus and into the general population, at least partly because many students live in the community (shared houses in ordinary streets) and they relax (drink), shop and travel among the general public.
I'm still horrified by the case rate in those zones and the areas surrounding them, and especially the deaths.

[I've not been to Tyneside since March ... and I'm not going until I've been vaccinated, apart from one masked, gloved and socially distanced business meeting in mid-August]

 

[Chilli.s]

Thoroughly pissed off that UK deaths per million population is now worse than USA

 

[Badgers]

Thoroughly pissed off that UK deaths per million population is now worse than USA

but unsuprised

 

[elbows]

As I suspected, it got off campus and into the general population, at least partly because many students live in the community (shared houses in ordinary streets) and they relax (drink), shop and travel among the general public.
I'm still horrified by the case rate in those zones and the areas surrounding them, and especially the deaths.

It is absolutely not safe or fair to assume that the wider community transmission was driven by University students. Students may just have demonstrated an intense and more easily detected version of what was happening in other sections of society at the same time.

People noticed a rise in cases in August, well before schools went back, let alone universities. By the start of September the testing system was under strain due to demand, and it became clear that a 2nd wave was emerging. And if we are going to talk about students as a big factor, its wrong to focus on university students alone when schools are clearly also a factor. And summer holidays. And restaurants and pubs, with eat out to help out heavily implicated. And workplaces, and a failure to offer regular testing of care home and hospital staff in a comprehensive way that would have reduced the feedback loops between infections in those settings and those in the broader community.

 

[Chilli.s]

but unsuprised

Yeah I suppose

My ancient father says its the worst government he's ever seen

 

[cupid_stunt]

Thoroughly pissed off that UK deaths per million population is now worse than USA

TBF, it was until some point in the summer when they over took us by a bit, I suspect they will again over the coming weeks.

 

[elbows]

The least he could do is appear halfway sorry that 51,000 people are dead rather than going on about butcher's dogs ffs.

It pains me to see those that are unhappy with the government pandemic response still using the lowest government figure for deaths. Just because thats the number the media go on about every day doesnt mean we have to go along with it. Once a week, on a Tuesday when ONS data comes out, we do get BBC graphics showing the different levels of death by different measures.



from 10:30 entry on their live updated page. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-54971208

 

[Badgers]

Yeah I suppose

My ancient father says its the worst government he's ever seen

As does my eldery pop

 

[frogwoman]

It pains me to see those that are unhappy with the government pandemic response still using the lowest government figure for deaths. Just because thats the number the media go on about every day doesnt mean we have to go along with it. Once a week, on a Tuesday when ONS data comes out, we do get BBC graphics showing the different levels of death by different measures.

View attachment 239240

from 10:30 entry on their live updated page. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-54971208

If the population is 67 million that would mean over 1 in 1000 people have died from COVID-19 ffs.

 

[elbows]

I should also say that although I disllike using the dashboard daily deaths figure to calculate overall totals, it actually does a much better job of capturing the Covid-19 deaths than the official government daily number did in the first months. Thats in great part due to the fact that initially that system was mostly only reporting hospital deaths. These days its doing a good job of producing daily numbers that are similar to the ones that come out from the ONS, which also makes me wonder if Covid-19 is being mentioned less on death certificates than it was, since thats the measure the ONS use. And the other ONS measure, excess deaths, is probably failing to capture the full picture at the moment because my understanding is that non-Covid deaths are still down compared to 5 year averages, so when considering the 70,000+ excess deaths we have to keep in mind that this has happened despite less deaths than normal from a range of other caouses during the pandemic/lockdowns etc.

For example if I use a September 1st starting point for counting 2nd wave deaths, I get:

10,595 using dashboard UK daily deaths by date of death.
7,873 using ONS/NISRA/NRS deaths by date of death and Covid-19 mentioned on death certificate.
Hard for me to give an exact excess mortality figure for that period, but somewhere around 5,000.

The latter 2 measures have more lag than the dashboard but that doesnt come close to accounting for all the difference.

 

[LDC]

If the population is 67 million that would mean over 1 in 1000 people have died from COVID-19 ffs.

Yeah, and that's an average, and if you break that into age groups it's even worse. Like in the younger age groups it's very, very low, and obviously in the older ones it's shockingly high.

 

[prunus]

If the population is 67 million that would mean over 1 in 1000 people have died from COVID-19 ffs.

That stacks up yes; about 1 in 10 people have had it, about 1% death rate, therefore about 0.1% of the whole population have died of it (all figures approximate but they’re the right orders of magnitude).

 

[editor]

That stacks up yes; about 1 in 10 people have had it, about 1% death rate, therefore about 0.1% of the whole population have died of it (all figures approximate but they’re the right orders of magnitude).

Strange how a 0.1% death rate sounds a lot less scary than one in a thousand. Or is that just me?

 

[two sheds]

The anti-vax or-herd immunity twat and his mates on another board keep going on about <0.1% death rate (rather than 60,000 and of course that's exaggerated because they include people who are labelled coronavirus even if they're run down by a bus) and how that's quite acceptable and how it's mainly old people with an existing condition who would probably have died soon anyway.

 

[existentialist]

The anti-vax or-herd immunity twat and his mates on another board keep going on about <0.1% death rate (rather than 60,000 and of course that's exaggerated because they include people who are labelled coronavirus even if they're run down by a bus) and how that's quite acceptable and how it's mainly old people with an existing condition who would probably have died soon anyway.

I've spoken to a few people around here with very much the same viewpoint. It's depressing

 

[two sheds]

He also bangs on about drugs/vaccine companies being in it for the profit and how corrupt they are which I can only really by starting off with "I have no great like of drugs companies but what you're talking about now is a huge conspiracy between doctors, nurses, researchers, virologists ..."

 

[StoneRoad]

Someone my OH knows about (so hearsay on hearsay !) is a covid-denier.
Or at least they were - having had a nearly fatal bout in their local ICU, they've now changed tunes and are quite fervent supporters of lock-down etc.

 

[Cloo]

The anti-vax or-herd immunity twat and his mates on another board keep going on about <0.1% death rate (rather than 60,000 and of course that's exaggerated because they include people who are labelled coronavirus even if they're run down by a bus) and how that's quite acceptable and how it's mainly old people with an existing condition who would probably have died soon anyway.

And it's not really about the death rates, it's about NHS capacity. I think people understand that it's not an unbearable tragedy in itself if a person over 80 dies (but that they should have to do so alone and in distress is another matter) - it's that we don't want to break the NHS..

 

[IC3D]

It's about double the deaths of a very bad flu year (30,000) but still counting.